by Mary Kochan
a post from Center for a Just Society
The National Defense Authorization Act is probably something you never heard of before the last few weeks of 2011, even though some iteration or other of this federal law has been enacted every year for the past 49 years. Right as Advent was starting, the Act (full name: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, hereinafter NDAA) was passed by Congress and subsequently signed into law on December 31 by President Obama. It specifies the budget and expenditures of the Department of Defense for the coming year.
So why the brouhaha over it this year?